Book 2 — THE DESTRUCTION OF SODOM.

[WITH A STEEL ENGRAVING.]

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BY MARGARET JUNKIN.

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The fair, broad plains of Jordan, rich with all

Their wealth of summer fruitage, stretched themselves

Beneath the orient day. The haunting mists

Still folded to their bosoms the hushed streams,

O’er which they had kept night-watch. Flocks and herds

Dotting the green, fresh pastures stirless lay,

While shepherds slept beside them.

Peacefully

The morning twilight slowly raised its lids

On the devoted city, quiet now,

With its wild midnight orgies overworn—

As from its gate a little band stole forth

With fearful footsteps, and affrighted gaze

Turned ever upward to the clear, deep heavens,

Where all the stars were fading into day.

A light, irradiate as the astral glow

Of planetary lustre, marked the brows

Of those who guided them—betokening

Angelic nature, as in the quick haste

Of their divine commission fast they urged

The trembling lingerers. They pressed the speed

Of the old man, bewildered and amazed

By weakening terror, and they caught the hands

Which the distracted mother madly wrung,

To think upon her children left behind,

’Mid the doomed multitude, and drew her on

With gentle violence: they cheered the flight

Of the twain daughters, who, aghast with fear,

Were fain to lay their foreheads in the dust,

In palsied helplessness. With the sweet power

Of angel eloquence—with sympathies

That yearned above their poor humanity

In Christ-like tenderness, they hasted still

Their lagging steps.

“Escape ye, for your lives

Look not behind you! neither tarry ye

In all the verdant plain:—Escape, escape

Safe to the mountain, lest ye be consumed:”

The level sunbeams slant athwart the plain

Through the long shadows of the flying group—

Yet the destruction lingered; yet the sky

Gave forth no presage of the coming wrath.

The sward, dew-beaded, yielded to their tread

Never more softly, and the bannered palms

Playfully dallied with the morning breeze.

Doubt grew to strength within the mother’s soul,

Beneath the firmamental quietude;

And though the angel’s clasp was on her hand,

She backward looked, with longing, loving gaze,

Incredulous of evil, to the roofs

And lines of fair, white walls, that glittering lay

Serene in the pure dawn. The rigid hand

Dropped icy from the angel’s—the stark form

Stood fixed, and motionless, and marble pale—

A ghostly monument of unbelief.

Dumb with the tracking fear that suffered not

A moment’s waste in sorrow—on they pressed

And gained the place of refuge. Then they turned,

Breathless and tottering, with their straining eyes

Clouded with horror, and their lips apart

In speechless eagerness, and awful dread,

Toward the distant city.

The calm morn

Seemed sliding downward to abysmal night:

All Nature’s face grew sickly: through the plain,

The fell simoom came sweeping like a fiend,

Twisting the tallest palm-trees, as their stems

Were lithest summer reeds, and wrenching up

Centurial cedars. Silver-threaded streams

Grew to a leaden blackness: tempest-clouds,

Lurid with fiery fringes, marshaled all

Their most terrific grandeur, and rolled on

In thunderous darkness, till the funeral heavens

Thrilled to the shock, and the fast-anchored earth

Seemed throbbing in the agitated swell

Of fathomless ether. Sulphurous, forked flames,

Like myriads of avenging swords, flashed out

Above the guilty cities, and the shriek

Of frantic multitudes came roaring on

In dismal howls, as if the eternal pit

Had emptied forth its demons. The hot wrath

Of God’s fierce anger rained with scathing breath

The deluge-fire of a descending hell—

And in the flaming sheets, the stately towers—

The lofty mausoleums—the proud walls—

The rich abodes of princes—and the homes

Of Heaven-defying wickedness, were wrapped

As in a fitting cerement.

When the strength

Of the spent storm of fury died away,

And the ghast ministers of wrath drew off

Their fearful hosts from that grim battle-field—

The holy Patriarch, who had sought by prayer

To turn aside the vengeance, stretched his view

Across the plains of Jordan; but no walls

Gleamed in the early sunshine; no fair flocks

Studded the bleak, swart slopes; no waving trees

Bent to the morning wind. Destruction swooped,

Like a fierce raven screaming o’er its prey,

Above the desert-waste: the seething smoke

Hung, pall-like, round the ruins: and he bowed

His head in sad yet meek submissiveness

Before the righteous judgments of his God.